zero(4)

NAME

   null, zero - data sink

DESCRIPTION

   Data written to the /dev/null and /dev/zero special files is discarded.

   Reads  from  /dev/null always return end of file (i.e., read(2) returns
   0), whereas reads from /dev/zero always return  bytes  containing  zero
   ('\0' characters).

   These devices are typically created by:

          mknod -m 666 /dev/null c 1 3
          mknod -m 666 /dev/zero c 1 5
          chown root:root /dev/null /dev/zero

FILES

   /dev/null
   /dev/zero

NOTES

   If  these  devices  are  not  writable and readable for all users, many
   programs will act strangely.

   Since Linux 2.6.31, reads from /dev/zero are interruptible by  signals.
   (This  change  was made to help with bad latencies for large reads from
   /dev/zero.)

SEE ALSO

   chown(1), mknod(1), full(4)

COLOPHON

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